Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

Hello everyone I wanna know what you all think about the new Simcity.
Another thing is what are you going to build I am referring to city specialization.
Also what do you think about the multiplayer feature?

I wanted to like it, I really did. I watched videos and was really impressed

And then the AMA with the devs came out. And they are baking in Always online drm and EA authentication severs into the game. Then the Beta came out and people had to wait upwards of 2hours just to authenticate to the server. I want to believe this was just a beta thing but I don't trust EA.

Now EA is putting microtransactions in every game(Including single player ones) including simcity

To those who buy it enjoy it.
I just cant buy the game and support these practices._________________“I do like metaphorical heroin and my heroin dealer. EA”

Same as sourdeez. When i first heard about it, i was pretty excited because i used to play the shit out of SimCity4.
Then i remembered it was a modern EA game, which made me twitch a little bit, but i figured they might have learned their lesson from the shit DRM in the past.
And then i heard about the always-online.
And then the micro transactions.

And then i asked, why the fuck don't EA just get it over with and start making facebook games? It's pretty bloody obvious that's all they want to do. Maybe make some shitty iOS ports for .99c with microtransactions out the arse.

Yo everyone I just found out something that may change your view towards the game's multiplayer if you wish to see how this is done check out the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znBsHXc6zNE
this shows that you can turn your region into a public or private region

"It has been out for three days, and SimCity is broken. Seriously, unplayably broken. As a long-time fan who's been looking forward to this week for many years, this is a huge, frustrating disappointment. The worst part? The main issue isn't with the game itself, but an entirely unnecessary and completely avoidable always-online DRM system that's keeping millions of fans from playing the game they paid for, when they were told they'd be able to play it."_________________“I do like metaphorical heroin and my heroin dealer. EA”

EA are being true to form by threatening to ban customers from origin who want a refund.

Meanwhile,
"We are continuing to do everything we can to address the server issues. In the meantime, so that we can give you as good an experience as possible, we are in the process of deploying a hotfix to all servers. This includes various improvements and also disables a few non-critical gameplay features (leaderboards, achievements and region filters). Disabling these features will in no way affect your core gameplay experience."

So basically, they're turning off every 'benefit' the always-online would've provided.

Fuck EA. Fuck them so hard. Every single person who works for them should be ashamed, and all the higher ups should be shot for the benefit of mankind - after all, if they weren't fucking over gamers, they'd be fucking over something else for something. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the EA higher ups want to work for Monsanto..

It absolutely boggles my mind that people still give EA money. They don't deserve a fucking cent, let alone the literal billions they rake in every year.

"while EA and Maxis continue fixing things on their end, they also want to offer up a freebie (in lieu of giving players a refund).

“…to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game. I know that’s a little contrived,” Bradshaw admits, “kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.”

Free game. Not bad. Hope its a good one._________________“I do like metaphorical heroin and my heroin dealer. EA”

I'll be friends again with EA when they somehow invent time travel and revert everyone back to 2005.
Otherwise, they can get stuffed. Pretty sure the last EA game i bought was back in 2010 (ME2), and that sure as shit won't change soon.

Hopefully the free game will be SimCity4 so that people can play an actual good one.

Green_Lantern wrote:

Not really sure you're point on that one....I'm pretty sure even Steam does that if you dispute a charge through your bank like that.

Steam don't ban you - or even stop you playing your games. If the charge is disrupted, they just stop you buying new games and try to contact you to see what's going on.
This is good if, for example, your bank accidentally messes up.

I would bet my bloody car on EA outright banning you with no communication if their precious money was disrupted for so much as a second.

Meanwhile
"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join," explained senior producer Kip Katsarelis on EA's forums."

Also just like to point out crack development is moving along reasonably well. Bunch of different groups are trying different things, from adapting old origin cracks to capturing server data to a full-on java based emulator.
Funnily enough, EAs DRM has actually worked. Because the crackers can't get the game online properly, they can't get 1/2 the info they need.
You cunning bastards, EA. I suppose that's one way to fix piracy. Just make the product shit enough and not even the pirates will be able to fix it.

"Video and computer games are growing increasingly reliant on remote servers and the implementation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to function properly.
When these measures fail, consumers are left with an unplayable experience. In these cases, the consumer should have the right to expect a full refund, whether the game was purchased in physical or digital form.

SimCity from publisher Electronic Arts is a recent example of why such a law is crucial. Even 72 hours after its release, players are unable to log in and play, rendering their $60 purchase useless. Yet they have no recourse for a refund.
Consumer protection laws vary from state to state. Please institute a universal, industry-wide refund policy for defective entertainment both digital and physical."_________________https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuluUJK9tHY
Oi

Typical story. I treat any single player game with always online DRM the same way I treat any game with Securom, as a automatic do not buy.

Sadly, with the way PC gaming is going, I probably won't have many games to choose from in the future since they are all coming up with these bullshit ideas to fight piracy that don't actually stop any piracy but just make the experience as miserable as possible for legitimate buyers instead.

Watch EA shoot themselves in the foot a second time with the "free game" thing. Either it will be a totally crap or cheap game of their choosing, or they'll give you a coupon code good for $20 that has so many freaking limitations on it that it is virtually unusable.